Sherpa Alliance

The OODA Loop is the essence of how fighter pilots are trained.  It captures the idea of a never ending loop of Observing, Orienting, Deciding and Acting.  Pilots are trained, trained again and trained some more, to master the detail complexity and dynamic complexity (see:  change has changed) of piloting a fighter jet, to have a smaller OODA Loop than their adversary.  In that way, their OODA Loop can operate inside their adversary’s OODA Loop , outmaneuvering them and winning the dogfight. 

“Think of the OODA loop as an interactive web with orientation at the core.  Orientation (how you interpret a situation, based upon your experience, culture, and heritage) directly guides decisions, but it also shapes observation and action.  At the same time, orientation is shaped by new feedback.  Reality changes ceaselessly, unfolding in an irregular, disorderly, unpredictable manner, despite our vain attempts to ensure the contrary.  There is no way out.  We must continue the whirl of reorientation, mismatches, analyses/synthesis over and over again ad infinitum.  The OODA loop persists endlessly”  (Keith Hammonds, The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot, Fast Company Magazine, Issue 59, 2002).

How does this relate to you, your business and your organizational agility? 

"Business is a dogfight.  Your job as a leader:  outmaneuver the competition, respond decisively to fast changing conditions , and defeat your rivals.  Agility is the essence of strategy in war and in business.  Connect vibrant OODA loops that are operating concurrently at several levels.  Workers close to the action stick to tactical loops, and their supervisors travel in operational loops, while leaders navigate much broader strategic and political loops.  The loops inform each other.  If everything is clicking, feedback from the tactical loops will guide decisions at higher loops and vice versa” (Keith Hammonds, The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot, Fast Company Magazine, Issue 59, 2002).

That’s the essence of Organizational Agility – OODA Loops which are operating concurrently, broadly and deeply throughout the organization, connecting with and informing each other horizontally and vertically.  This resonates strongly with our work:

Our In the Driving Seat®: Journey-ionics™ model is a similar concept to the OODA Loop,  helping us take its essence into our organization (see Strate’gems article:  Executive Intelligence, Intuition & Resilience) to drive a continuous loop of thinking, questions, decisions and actions.

Our  In the Driving Seat®: Journey-judgment™ model  lays out the agenda for an Executive  (see Strate’gems article:  Execution Excellence) and the organization, or part of the organization, they are piloting.

Our In the Driving Seat®: Journey-holonics™ model  captures the idea of vibrant OODA Loops operating horizontally and vertically throughout the business, to find and concurrently engineer our path (see Strate’gems article:  Path-Finding).

How these come together as the basis for your agility as an organization is outlined in the booklet, Organizational Agility & Architecting Breakthrough Journeys.

John R Boyd invented the concept of the OODA Loop as a young Air Force fighter pilot, becoming known as “40 Second Boyd”.  He laid down a challenge - from a position of disadvantage, he’d have his jet on the other pilot’s tail in 40 seconds, and legend has it that he never lost.  (read more at The Strategy of a Fighter Pilot)

If you were to take both ends of that 40 second journey and stretch it out to the time-horizon of your business, or your role in your business, I suggest to you that the detail complexity and dynamic complexity (The Traffic of Dynamic Complexity) of your unfolding journey is becoming increasingly similar.   That’s what our work is about.